Bob Ewell Quotes

I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 1. Scout is talking about her brother Jem’s broken arm, referred to in the opening lines of the novel. This foreshadows Bob Ewell’s heinous attack on the children.

Atticus Finch on bending the law

“Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases. In your case, the law remains rigid. So to school you must go.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 3. Atticus lays down the law to Scout about going to school. She doesn’t see why she has to go when Bob Ewell’s son Burris doesn’t. But Atticus explains that the Ewells are a special case. One of the town’s poorest families with Bob Ewell drinking all the money he gets, they are allowed leave school when they want, hunt out of season, because the authorities take pity on them.

Atticus said the Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations. None of them had done an honest day’s work in his recollection. He said that some Christmas, when he was getting rid of the tree, he would take me with him and show me where and how they lived. They were people, but they lived like animals

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 3. Atticus lays down the law to Scout about going to school. She doesn’t see why she has to go when Bob Ewell’s son Burris doesn’t. The usually understanding and non-judgmental Atticus has strong words to say about the Ewells. But to be fair to him, Atticus is quite right to speak disapprovingly of the neglectful way Bob Ewell treats his children. They are often left to starve while their father spends the money for their food on whiskey. Atticus is a man who believes strongly in taking care of family.

“It’s against the law, all right,” said my father, “and it’s certainly bad, but when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don’t know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 3. Atticus explains to Scout why Bob Ewell is allowed to hunt out of season and break the law. Everyone is aware that his children are starving because he spends his welfare checks on alcohol.

Every town the size of Maycomb had families like the Ewells. No economic fluctuations changed their status – people like the Ewells lived as guests of the county in prosperity as well as in the depths of a depression. No truant officers could keep their numerous offspring in school; no public health officer could free them from congenital defects, various worms, and the diseases indigenous to filthy surroundings.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 17. Scout describes the position of the Ewell family in Maycomb. They are poor, social outcasts and at the bottom rung of white society.

All the little man on the witness stand had that made him any better than his nearest neighbors was, that if scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 17. Scout is describing Bob Ewell during the Robinson trial. She has the maturity to see Ewell for what he is, a small man fashioned by years of hate and prejudice.

“Well, Mayella was raisin’ this holy racket so I dropped m’load and run as fast as I could but I run into th’ fence, but when I got distangled I run up to th’ window and I seen – ” Mr. Ewell’s face grew scarlet. He stood up and pointed his finger at Tom Robinson. “– I seen that black n***** yonder ruttin’ on my Mayella!”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 17. Bob Ewell says this at Tom Robinson’s trial, condemning him to prison and ultimate death with his deadly lies. Ewell uses racist and dehumanizing language, doesn’t speak Tom’s name, emphasises his color and compares him to an animal – “ruttin.”

So serene was Judge Taylor’s court, that he had few occasions to use his gavel, but he hammered fully five minutes…As Judge Taylor banged his gavel, Mr. Ewell was sitting smugly in the witness chair, surveying his handiwork. With one phrase he had turned happy picknickers into a sulky, tense, murmuring crowd, being slowly hypnotized by gavel taps lessening in intensity until the only sound in the courtroom was a dim pink-pink-pink: the judge might have been rapping the bench with a pencil.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 17. After Bob Ewell testifies that he had “seen that black n***** yonder ruttin’ on my Mayella”, the courtroom erupts and Judge Taylor tries to restore order. The spectactors had gotten what they came for, a cocktail of sex, scandal and hate-mongering, thanks to Ewell’s lies.

Mr. Ewell wrote on the back of the envelope and looked up complacently to see Judge Taylor looking at him as if he were some fragrant gardenia in full bloom on the witness stand, to see Mr. Gilmer half-sitting, half standing at his table. The jury was watching him, one man leaning over with his hands over the railing.
“What’s so intrestin’?” he asked.
“You’re left handed Mr. Ewell,” said Judge Taylor.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 17. Atticus intelligently asks Bob Ewell, who has little control of his lies in the witness box, to write his name on an envelope. Judge Taylor observes Ewell uses his left hand. Atticus believes Ewell beat his daughter Mayella, not Tom Robinson. Ewell’s left-handedness and Tom’s disabled left arm lend weight to this because Mayella was hit on her right side by someone who led with their left hand.

“She reached up an’ kissed me ‘side of th’ face. She says she never kissed a grown man before an’ she might as well kiss a n*****. She says what her papa do to her don’t count. She says, ‘Kiss me back, n*****.’ I say Miss Mayella lemme outa here an’ tried to run but she got her back to the door an’ I’da had to push her. I didn’t wanta harm her, Mr. Finch, an’ I say lemme pass, but just when I say it Mr. Ewell yonder hollered through th’ window.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 19. Tom Robinson giving evidence at his trial describes how Mayella Ewell tried to hug him and kiss him. There is an inference in what Mayella told him – “what her father do to her don’t count” – that she may have been sexually abused by her father.

It was Miss Stephanie’s pleasure to tell us: this morning Mr. Bob Ewell stopped Atticus on the post office corner, spat in his face, and told him he’d get him if it took the rest of his life.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 22. What Ewell said in his threat does indeed foreshadow that he will get back at Atticus – by attacking his children. Also that it will cost Ewell his life.

“Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does. So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that’s something I’ll gladly take. He had to take it out on somebody and I’d rather it be me than that houseful of children out there. You understand?”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 23. Atticus is such a good and selfless human being that he can even feel compassion for a man as bad as Bob Ewell. After exposing Ewell’s lying in the witness box in court, Atticus says he would rather Ewell direct his fury at him rather than take it out on Mayella Ewell.

Aunt Alexandra entered the room as Atticus was saying, “We don’t have anything to fear from Bob Ewell, he got it all out of his system that morning.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Atticus,” she said. “His kind’d do anything to pay off a grudge. You know how those people are.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 23. Aunt Alexandra has a foreboding response to Atticus’s dismissal of Bob Ewell’s threat to pay him back. And she turns out to be right.

Mr. Ewell said it made one down and about two more to go.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 25. Town gossip Stephanie Crawford reports this threat from Bob Ewell to Aunt Alexandra, foreshadowing that Ewell had further evil plans following the death of Tom Robinson.

Mr. Ewell kept the same distance behind her until she reached Mr. Link Deas’s house. All the way to the house, Helen said she heard a soft voice behind her, crooning foul words. Thoroughly frightened, she telephoned Mr. Link at his store, which was not too far from his house. As Mr. Link came out of his store he saw Mr. Ewell leaning on the fence. Mr. Ewell said “Don’t you look at me, Link Deas, like I was dirt. I a’int jumped your – ”
“You don’t have to touch her. All you have to do is make her afraid, an if assault a’int enough to keep you locked up awhile, I’ll get you in on the Ladies Law, so you get outa my sight! If you think I mean it, just bother that girl again.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 27. Bob Ewell starts to harrass and follow Tom Robinson’s widow Helen around town, trying to scare her and exert his power over her. Link Deas warns him and threatens to get Sheriff Tate involved.

“I don’t like it Atticus, I don’t like it at all,” was Aunt Alexandra’s assessment of these events. “That man seems to have a running grudge against everyone connected with the case. I know how that kind are about paying off grudges, but I don’t understand why he should harbor one – he had his way in court, didn’t he?”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 27. Aunt Alexandra is referring to Bob Ewell, who publicly swore revenge against Atticus after Atticus made him look like a fool during the Tom Robinson trial. Atticus believes he is just sounding off and won’t go through with it, but he is proven wrong when Ewell attacks Atticus’s children.

“I proved him a liar but John made him look like a fool. All the time Ewell was on the stand I couldn’t dare look at John and keep a straight face. John looked at him as if he were a three-legged chicken or a square egg. Don’t tell me judges don’t try to prejudice juries.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 27. Atticus, recalling Judge Taylor’s confused, incredulous expression when he looked at Bob Ewell during Tom Robinson’s trial. The implication being that the Judge was looking at Ewell that way to convey the impression to the jury that his testimony against Robinson was nonsensical.

High above us in the darkness a solitary mocker poured out his repertoire in blissful unawareness of whose tree he sat in, plunging from the shrill kee, kee of the sunflower bird to the irascible qua-ack of a bluejay, to the sad lament of Poor Will, Poor Will, Poor Will.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 28. The mocker is a mockingbird, standing for innocence and defenseless beings. The bluejay represents malevolent creatures that harm others. Boo Radley is a symbolic mockingbird and Bob Ewell a bluejay. The closeness of both birds in the same tree foreshadows Ewell’s attack on the children and Boo defending them.

Shuffle foot had not stopped with us this time. His trousers swished softly and steadily. Then they stopped. He was running, running toward us with no child’s steps.
“Run, Scout! Run! Run!” Jem screamed.
I took one giant step and found myself reeling: my arms useless, in the dark, I could not keep my balance.
“Jem, Jem, help me, Jem!”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 28. This passage is full of suspense and heightened tension, as the author through hints and clues rather than direct statements, tells about Bob Ewell’s pursuit of and attack on Scout and Jem.

I made my way along in what I thought was the direction of the road. I was not sure, because I had been turned around so many times. But I found it and looked down to the street light. A man was passing under it. The man was walking with the staccato steps of someone carrying a load too heavy for him. He was going around the corner. He was carrying Jem. Jem’s arm was dangling crazily in front of him.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 28. Scout describes how a man was carrying Jem away from the scene of the attack by Bob Ewell. The man, unknown to Scout then, turns out to be Boo Radley.

Mr. Tate found his neck and rubbed it. “Bob Ewell’s lyin’ on the ground under that tree down yonder with a kitchen knife stuck up under his ribs. He’s dead, Mr. Finch.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 28. Heck Tate arrives at Atticus’s home with the message that Bob Ewell has been found dead stabbed with a knife.

“He was out of his mind.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 28. Atticus tries to give Bob Ewell the benefit of the doubt, after his attack on Jem and Scout. Atticus is a very compassionate and forgiving person who believes in the essential goodness of people.

“Mr. Finch, there’s just some kind of men you have to shoot before you can say hidy to ’em. Even then, they ain’t worth the bullet it takes to shoot ’em. Ewell ‘as one of ’em.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 29. Sheriff Heck Tate tells Atticus that Bob Ewell’s stabbing death is no loss to Maycomb. He is downplaying it to cover up Boo Radley’s role in the death.

“Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 30. This is Atticus’s response to Sheriff Heck Tate when the lawman claims that Jem never stabbed Bob Ewell. Atticus thinks that his son Jem killed Ewell in self-defense and that the sheriff is trying to hush it up to protect Jem. Always a firm advocate of honesty and the truth, Atticus believes that justice must be seen to be done, so he won’t countenance any cover-up.

“Heck,” Atticus’s back was turned. “If this thing’s hushed up it’ll be a simple denial to Jem of the way I’ve tried to raise him. Sometimes I think I’m a total failure as a parent, but I’m all they’ve got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him… if I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn’t meet his eye, and the day I can’t do that I’ll know I’ve lost him. I don’t want to lose him and Scout, because they’re all I’ve got.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 30. Atticus thinks it was Jem who stabbed Bob Ewell, in self-defense, but he refuses to have Sheriff Heck Tate hush it up. He taught his children to lead honest, decent lives, so he feels he cannot be party to spreading a lie and undoing everything he has tried to teach them.

“Heck, can’t you even try to see it my way?…if they don’t trust me they won’t trust anybody. Jem and Scout know what happened. If they hear of me saying downtown something different happened – Heck, I won’t have them anymore. I can’t live one way in town and another way in my home.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 30. Atticus to Sheriff Heck Tate, on the matter of hushing up the truth about Jem’s possible role in Bob Ewell’s stabbing. Atticus is acutely aware that his children look up to him as their role model and he is determined to remain a good example to them. He knows that if he is two-faced and lives a life of duplicity, then he will lose their trust and them. Atticus is a very moral person who puts a high value on truth.

“I never heard tell that it’s against the law for a citizen to do his utmost to prevent a crime from being committed, which is exactly what he did, but maybe you’ll say it’s my duty to tell the town all about it and not hush it up. Know what’d happen then? Know what’d happen then? All the ladies in Maycomb includin’ my wife’d be knocking on his door bringing angel food cakes. To my way of thinkin’, Mr. Finch, taking the one man who’s done you and this town a great service an’ draggin’ him with his shy ways into the limelight – to me, that’s a sin. It’s a sin and I’m not about to have it on my head. If it was any other man, it’d be different. But not this man, Mr. Finch.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 30. Sheriff Heck Tate suggests to Atticus that Boo Radley was the person responsible for killing Bob Ewell. But Tate goes against the letter of the law when he says that the killing prevented a crime and suggests an investigation would only bring acute pain to Boo Radley. He advocates a cover up and that they should stay silent.

“Scout,” he said, “Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?”
Atticus looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him and kissed him with all my might. “Yes sir, I understand,” I reassured him. “Mr. Tate was right.”
Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’d sort of be like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?”
He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 30. Atticus asks Scout if she understands why they are keeping Boo Radley’s involvement in the Bob Ewell’s death a secret. Scout understands that Boo, who saved her and Jem, was like a mockingbird and they had to protect him.

“Read it out loud, please, Atticus. It’s real scary.”
“No,” he said. “You’ve had enough scaring for a while. This is too – ”
“Atticus, I wasn’t scared.”
He raised his eyebrows, and I protested: “Leastways not till I started telling Mr. Tate about it. Jem wasn’t scared. Asked him and he said he wasn’t. Besides, nothin’s real scary except in books.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 31. Scout asks Atticus to read a scary book aloud to her. When Atticus tries to refuse saying she’s had enough scaring, Scout protests that she was not scared while Bob Ewell was attacking Jem and herself with a knife.